


The Story Weaver

by cartographicalspine



Series: The Hearthkeeper [12]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Changing Tenses, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Hero Stories, Hurt/Comfort, Rumors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 03:09:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14761467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: You have a history with the Warden who ended the Blight, don’t you?In Haven, Leliana reflects on stories, rumors, and the ugly side of heroes and truth.





	The Story Weaver

**Author's Note:**

> This is purposefully vague, even the "oddly" specific ending, because this was an ambitious look at Leliana as a spymaster, Left Hand, bard, Blight veteran, and deep in her core, a storyteller with a gentle heart. From the start, all the possible Origins are present, one at a time, as she presents the last time she ever saw them, and the Herald of Andraste also appears as multiple iterations (not all, but this was big and messy enough). It's obvious which one is Leliana's favorite, as it's mine, though the point of it isn't that all the stories are true at the same time that they're false, but that they are the pursuit of an ideal she still longs for even in the darkness she's trying to find her way through.

Trevelyan’s eyes watch her with hooded interest despite their schooled expression. Or for want of it. She’s always been good with rumors; though she has no idea yet which background tucked away into her files is true. A disgraced Templar recruit in exile in Nevarra. Usurper by virtue of birth to one of the family’s minor branches. Tranquil and un-harrowed, the secret shame of Bann Trevelyan of Ostwick. All rumors. What’s real? What’s not? Sifting truth from fiction is like sand and water through her fingers; Ostwick, she finds, straddles the line between land and sea like it has half-fallen into the waves already, crumbling edges that don’t match.

And so they watch her with eyes that hide everything, or nothing, or both. It’s almost like looking into a mirror.

She wonders if they still believe in heroes; they’re young enough for it and youth has always been a blessing and curse intertwined. She used to, once. Tales and songs were her life, after all, and heroes made some of the best friends a bard could ask for. The Hero of Ferelden was no different, depending on who was telling the tale.

They were a young fallen noble from the coast, a silent, watchful city elf out of the capital’s alienage. The dwarf who climbed up out of dust from the lowest point of underground Orzammar, or fell from its dizzying, prominent heights. A denizen of the Circle of Magi, fire and ice made human flesh, or a slighter, more subtle power with pointed ears. A wildling elf of the proud and dangerous wandering clans. Depending on the day and mood, she would cycle through them all at some point. It mattered little to her audience.

Regardless, she had delighted in the reward and coin of her trade. Her pride. And so the Hero of Ferelden was 

_arrogant, too._

_Exiled princess, beautiful, fierce, strong. A magnificent story, soured. The golems of Orzammar, in the hands of this hateful madwoman. Her eyes were shadowed, but bright like diamonds...or as hard. Tossing her head, hair a shimmering moonlit spill down her back, Aeducan stood her full height, and even if she hadn’t been tall for a dwarf she still would have towered over Leliana at her feet, furiously packing her things._

_“Let me remind you of one thing, Sister. You chose to follow me. That was not my doing.”_

_“I was wrong!” she’d said, feeling more and more like a child. Naive, foolish, silly ideas and nothing else. “Joining you was a mistake!”_

_Aeducan raised her eyebrows and a hand, mocking surprise splashed across her face. “You know, I think this is the first time that we’re on the same page, Leliana.” The first time she used her name, too. “Get out.”_  

What should Leliana say about the Warden who ended the Fifth Blight? History has cared little enough about that dark time, belittled and scoffed at mere years after its end. Her opinion seems to have mattered less than that, even then. What had she been able to contribute? Her opinions? Her faith and ideals?

They were all trampled beneath a hundred thousand marching boots, pairs and halves that fold like hands or lips, spills of rumors and half-truths. History not written by victors or losers but by opinions and perspectives, where belief came from listening and trusting. And while she had listened, the Hero had

_lied._

_The words from her sweet lips tasted sour in Leliana’s mouth, which she had pressed again and again to Brosca’s, when she had believed her. She’d thought Brosca believed in her, too._

_“Girl, shhh,” Brosca soothed, her hands scarred and pretty and steady. There was fear in her eyes, real fear that she hadn’t been able to hide. How her honeyed tone and warm smile had hidden so much. “Girl, no, don’t cry—”_

_What Leliana said next was lost to her own memory, but Brosca’s eyes flooded, an amber glass spilling over. “I love you, Leliana.”_

_But the remains of her faith rotted and spewed beneath foul blood at her back, the Temple silent and hollowed around them, its guardian at their feet, as dead as the dust in the urn. “I don’t think you know what love means, if this is what you’ve done with mine.”_

_She descended the mountain alone, with nothing but the bow on her back and her battered armor, a single arrow in her quiver that she could not bring herself to draw. She wept for her people’s faith, destroyed for greed and power, for Brosca, a snake in warm, smooth coils on her skin, but mostly for herself, for believing in Brosca’s sweetest lie of all._  

The time of the Fifth Blight, regardless of truth or lies, still sits heavily on Leliana’s mind. Her gains and losses, what she was given and what she had taken from her, all the life she watched die. All the people. All the hope. How they’d been pushed to the very edge of Ferelden, to the sea, tumultuous grey mammoth lapping at their heels as the darkspawn horde approached. There had been talk of evacuations in its final, desperate hours, ships on the harbor wavering in the wake of battle, watching as the barriers fell to siege and fire. 

It wasn’t unlike now, with all eyes turned up towards the sky, except instead of a bruise-purple archdemon, they watch the very Fade thunder sickly green over the mountains. Before her, the Herald’s hand sputters and crackles like its twin, Fade weaving into soft flesh, lighting ghost veins up and down slender fingers like ones she had known before. The Hero’s hands were

 _broken._  

_All of Cousland had been. From the moment she’d laid eyes on him, there had been an air of hopelessness to him, like the dream from back in the Circle Tower. He cried so often that she couldn’t remember not seeing him with red-rimmed eyes, even when he smiled. It was pretty and fragile, and sometimes made his blue eyes light up, but mostly they were a flat, greying sea in his face._

_He was also steady, with strong hands on his longbow, and lovely, with delicate fingers on ivory keys, and she wished she’d coaxed more songs from them, from his voice, from his heart. Perhaps that might have saved him. But beyond the china softness of his eyes and hands there was an angry, broken chord in him, louder than the Chant and the ballads and the bawdy tavern songs they’d sometimes laughed over, blushing._

_It was a mantra that kept him upright, smooth over his silver tongue, setting his best friend up with a throne he never wanted and an unhappy marriage. A battle cry that saw him into reckless, death-seeking danger, each time a little less life in his lungs and heart. Bitter, toxic words that led him to blood and poison on his hands, turning his expected revenge into hollow triumph. And there was nothing left of the boy with the sad eyes when the Warden and the archdemon went down_

together. Trevelyan clasps their hands together as Leliana composes her response, platitudes and pretty words that she isn’t sure belong in her mouth, let alone as a part of this particular story. The mark has quieted, a lull between pulses of fiery magic and flame. She’s always wondered what magic feels like, not just within a body, as she’s no stranger to it, from Wynne’s healing hands to her wounds, but within the very veins coursing through a person. Once, she might have asked a friend.

Once, the Hero might have answered that it was like

_chains._

_“At least, that’s what this world makes of it.” Amell’s eyes were glittering, dark things, wide and feline and as tricksy as one. She held her head up high, a habit she religiously carried on her former mentor’s behalf; when asked about him, she only pursed her lips and shook her head. “He wouldn’t fight, though he had his People’s spirit.”_

_And that was that._

_She set out to make the most of the freedom she’d found in Duncan, in the Wardens, in the world. But there was a fire that burned brighter than anything else in her, hungry and undiscerning. Curiosity and inquisitiveness, all restraint shed like rattling chains. How she fought, how she’d made as many enemies as allies, how vicious she could be to friend and foe alike...even to herself. How she bent herself into endless forms ethereal and grotesque, healed herself from impossible lengths, to not only protect her freedom but to deserve it. To make it soar as high as possible before—_

_The last time Leliana saw her, Amell shattered herself against the archdemon, and they rained down in a shower of feathers and scales over Denerim, so that the Templars could never gather every piece of her for the cage again._

Trevelyan understands cages. Leliana can see it in the little tremble of their lip, how their mouth threatens to crumple at the edges. Whether the Templars or the Game or their own mind, they’ve turned corner after identical corner to find bars and locks. She’s been down this path before; Orlais, her foundations, the Game, playing her mentor’s lover, Ferelden, her blossoming faith. Hope. Love. 

Does Trevelyan know love? The loveliness of how it starts, how warm and safe its embrace is, the cage it can become? Once, she mistook duty and purpose for love. The Hero would know. The Hero

_caged her._

_Leliana had loved Marjolaine, and once gave every part of herself to that love, and in the end, she’d watched the light that had been her world leave the woman’s eyes. But then Tabris slipped their hands together, fingers interlocked, and in camp Leliana found new love, again and again, in her. It was so soft, and so sweet._

_She loved to card her fingers through Tabris’ shorn dark locks, evened out by Leliana’s hands not long after Lothering. Together, they learned to trace love in the newfound discovery of each other, their marked bodies. The torn tip from Tabris’ right ear from when she’d literally hacked herself out of her abusers’ hands, ragged hair and blood and screams, the slight indent in the flesh between Leliana’s ribs where Marjolaine’s knife had betrayed her, with sweet words and cruel gentleness._

_Their story ended in scars, too. How Tabris had shrieked, how Leliana had screamed back, scars upon scars where their hearts wanted different things. How Dorothea...no, Justinia, called her back to devotion and debt and love, and why couldn’t Tabris see that she was doing this for the both of them? “Why can’t you see how much I love you?”_

_The Chantry betrayed Tabris one too many times, promised and failed to deliver, and now it took Leliana, too. Her heart, her love. “How can I possibly believe that, Leliana?”_  

 _Perhaps that was the worst scar she’d been left with. Tabris always could sink the knife in deep, even when she didn’t realize it._  

There’s a scar on Trevelyan’s face that puckers at their mouth, or one on their nose where the break had healed badly, or none at all. Those are superficial, and yet they often make themselves felt so acutely. Maybe Trevelyan feels self-conscious about them, maybe not. Maybe the scars are deeper than skin and flesh alone. Leliana has a pair tucked into the joints of her fingers, right beneath the calluses from every arrow she’s ever drawn. They have never hurt since they healed, yet she is distinctly aware of their exact location and look. 

What makes these marks so important is not that they hurt (they don’t) or that they were deep (they weren’t), but how she got them. It was when the Hero

_returned from the dead._

_Oh, he hadn’t really, but the kingdom of Ferelden had declared Surana legally dead following the immediate end of the Fifth Blight. King Alistair had been quick to cover his bases even back then, inexperienced and learning to look out for himself for the first time. The last Warden would have no place within his borders, no more influence over his decisions or over anyone else. Surana quietly complied and vanished. After Loghain’s death, he hadn’t a single sympathetic perspective at his disposal, and upon seeing his former companions’ faces, he must have deemed it wiser to take his battle elsewhere._

_Until he found a cure. The Cure. A way back into the king’s good graces (and through him the others) because after all the power and influence he had amassed, how could obscurity ever suit him? Where would he be without the world revolving around him? He couldn’t trust but he could pull the strings on his puppets. He_ needed _to. And perhaps that rankled the most, that she had traded one Marjolaine for another, and that they would always return for their pretty little toys._  

_Her hands had trembled, the fletching slicing her callused fingers. It slipped and clattered, and Surana had laughed. “You’re not going to shoot me, Leliana.”_

_The barrier went up too late to spare him completely. Arrogance blinded him, but it was her arrow that took his eye. It was near a minute before he went completely still on the ground, his screams echoing in the chasm between them. Wretched, clinging life in his bloodied fingers for no purpose. Why (why)_

Why?

Forget the how. Leliana wants to know the why. Why did the Conclave fail as it did, perishing before it had a chance to breathe? Why did Justinia die as she did, in a sea of her beloved faithful and her good intentions? Why did the prisoner alone survive, when a mountain itself was leveled at the magnitude of death and destruction? Why— 

...why does she resent their life so much, small and trembling and frightened, hunched over beneath the weight of what survival means in the face of all this death?

She was not like this before. She _couldn’t_ have been. Her upbringing had been capricious and haughty, but she’d blossomed in Ferelden among roses, among the small, white bouquets of Andraste’s Grace tucked into her pack. A stream of fragrance, sweet and gentle. Little gifts, silly little favors on a journey through the darkest places that could exist in this world. She’d been so soft and young, and she’d loved in that way, too.

Foolish children, they had been, she and the Hero

_alike._

_Perhaps that was why she’d found Mahariel so dear. Lovely and sympathetic, a kindred spirit. A true friend. His smile was his rouge, his eyes were his jewels, and his laughter a perfume. A voice that clung to hers, silence and words alternated in a perfect weaver’s pattern together. They had been drawn to each other instantly, like children at play._  

_They’d been such naive, simple creatures._

_Once, she’d heard that one could not be a savior to all; one must be a monster to some. Would that she had remembered it back then, though whether it might have saved him was something she could never truly know. All he’d tried to do was help people, and all the Blight did was take people. The more he helped, the higher the mire rose, and the one hope he’d held on to returned in the midst of Shrieks, with nothing but months of torment and a plea for an end. Mercy, his heart was not a hero’s; it never stood a chance._  

_Alistair and Loghain alike could never have found a savior in him; the last time either of them spoke to him, his smile—watery, feeble—no longer inspired but groveled beneath their hard stares. Twin looks, foil for foil. Everyone lived but there was no happily ever after. He stopped pretending then, that he still believed in fairy tales, and Leliana was the first one to see what was left underneath._

_She’d screamed and screamed when she found it, and Zevran had hauled her back and let her cling to him as he stared, eyes like glass in his stony expression. Every step toward the archdemon had been a long, arduous effort, an ordeal that had seemed endless, but even so she’d found joy and light. All of that changed in the final moments of the Blight. Leliana had never seen darkness so completely as she had then, in the twisted remains of Mahariel before the slain archdemon, after Despair had torn him open from within._  

Leliana doesn’t remember screaming this time around, but she remembers hearing it when the mountain fell, after the deafening silence that followed the explosion. A wail, long and resounding, an anguished echo through the valley, then sobs cascading down with the survivors like water over rocks. No, they were not her screams, but they could have been, once.

Her heart sat heavy and cold within her chest through all the reports that her spies put into her hands, numbers and summaries, all the tired, distant observations of their hopeless situation. All forgone conclusions in the eyes of the people. The Chancellor was their voice, their only one, even if Cassandra rightly pointed out that he was just a bureaucrat. But he reflected the fears and doubt of the remnants, all that was left of the Most Holy’s faithful flock. Fear and pain and disillusionment. A part of her wept at that, and still does. 

Once, she thought she was chosen. She thought the Maker had smiled on her, His child. But on this cold mountaintop, within dust where she'd once found the most tender affirmation of her faith, she found nothing but the heart of despair yet again.

And then there was a cry.

It's strange, she thinks, looking back on it, how the news had come out of seemingly nowhere. Cassandra had pushed only the most essential forces forward, and the rest wavered on the edge of her constant argument with the Chancellor. Retreat, remain. They'd been at a standstill. 

 _There's a survivor,_ a nameless scout said (try as she might Leliana has not been able to track them down since) and that threw them forward over the edge, despite the Chancellor's arguments. _A survivor._  

She didn't wonder how; there was no time but to move without seeing, and so they surged towards the temple ruins. There, in the depths of so much violent emptiness, was a body. 

Trevelyan stumbled forward, all seeking eyes and seeking hands, too strong and urgent to be restrained. Or they clung to Cassandra, who held back all their pain and fear in her arms. Or perhaps they had been there first, dead but now alive, lost but now found. A defiance of destruction. A first breath.

Trevelyan shuddered into being then, three times. And she was a failure of a Templar gone rogue that didn't even have sanction to be at the Conclave. He was a disgraceful heir who served as more of a mouthpiece than a delegate for his family's interests. A Tranquil whose own family let slip away into the chaotic fall of the Circles to save face.

Leliana saw none of that when they came together, their vastly different orbits colliding after years apart, the many paths they took to reach the very moment and place she was now privy to. She only stood as an observer with Cassandra, their own men pushing past them on their orders, a ring of swords pointed and closing in on the survivor. The next few days would see the story expand, but she was acutely aware, in that moment, of the threads entwining before her eyes. Already she was peering down them, searching for their beginning; already she heard the whispers teasing at her ears. She’d always known a good story when she saw one. 

Cautious steps. Curious ones, and Leliana drew close enough to see a tangle of dark hair and bedraggled clothes, a crumpled mess of limbs askew. Their eyelids fluttered, lashes dark and feathery on their ash-dusted cheeks, Fade magic lighting up Fade dirt on their skin, eerie and sharp. They stirred briefly but their legs and strength gave out, falling into darkness and silence once again. She caught a glimpse of their eyes before they collapsed, which only days later would hold a sea of confusion and fear too stark to be hidden, when she and Cassandra pried for answers that just weren’t there.

They are the same eyes she looks into now, briny green and blue and everything between as they ask her (out of keen curiosity, a compulsion to be friendly, or genuine interest) for her stories.

Leliana cannot entirely hold back a laugh.  Her purpose Divine, the stories she deals in now are rumors and information that influence nations, and she is tired of them. The story she sees here is one of a new legend, should they willingly work for the people’s good opinion. She will counsel them as such, but she feels no desire to do more than that. She is done with tales and songs, with performance, with the weaving of word and song in her deft fingers...with walking alongside heroes. She knows what she has to give, what she must do, what she now is. Her work is not that of ideals anymore; perhaps it never was.

Regardless of her thoughts, she ‘directs’ them to their stories. If they are so intent on them, they will find plenty in the library. There must be something in her voice or in her face, for Trevelyan makes an idle, prodding observation. They offer a courteous apology. Their face falls. It is fascinating to see the shore-and-sea shifting of Ostwick in their expressions. 

Then, they ask the question that has _her_ drifting. _You have a history with the Warden who ended the Blight, don’t you?_  

Ah. So Leliana does.

In the years following the Blight, her answers grew practiced and uniform, her time and energy shorter, her joy wistful and distant.  She led an expedition for the Chantry, lent her skills to its service, allowed herself to be folded back into the work of the faithful so that by the time she penned her letter about her audience with the Grand Cleric, she was a thousand stories away from the Warden and counting.

And now, she doesn't even have to choose from among countless details and moments. Or rather, she doesn’t bother. They still come to mind, of course, but her mouth carefully offers the answers that don’t give her away entirely, the right words for the moment and person and place.

 _I count them among my closest friends_ , she says sometimes, and at other times she purses her lips around _they were not what I expected._

She regrets, _joining them was a mistake._ She cannot keep a smile from her voice when she admits foolishly, _they are always in my thoughts._  

She suddenly feels so very tired and doesn’t know why at all. There’s a lump in her throat, and her headache plays havoc on her mind when paired with her weary eyes. Her work is a whirlwind of slow, eroding pain but at least it’s subtle and quiet. All she wants is to return to it, but she doesn’t know how to make the moment stop.

Trevelyan nods, and this is something she cannot yet figure out about them, but for however messy they are with their own emotions, they can be surprisingly accommodating for those of others. So they abbreviate the conversation and tuck it away for later, and Leliana suddenly finds the tightness in her chest lessening as she watches Trevelyan leave. The mark on their hand pulses insistently, and Trevelyan

lifts her hand, adjusts her mind and fraying nerves to the thrum of magic

examines it like a specimen, his body a part of the experiment 

pushes himself to accept all of it whole, the core of his being  

and then they have vanished around the corner, a little beacon for her spies to trail and report on, for they’re never truly out of sight. 

They are one and many, and she doesn’t know who they are. But does it matter to her, these cousins she has compiled her meager records on? Beyond the purposes of the Inquisition, does she want to care? She has cared so much, and she has held things dear that she shouldn’t have, and the time for caring has passed, hasn’t it? The things she has done still haunt her, as do the people and places she’s seen. And the Warden…

...well, they were never good at quitting, were they? 

_They were not what I expected, and now I count them among my closest friends. Joining them was a mistake, for they are always in my thoughts. When this is over, when the Inquisition has no more need of me, I would like—_

Only too late does she realize, deep within reports of Fade rifts and demons, words and numbers scattered before her eyes and hands, exactly what she said to Trevelyan that made them leave her to her thoughts. 

And so the story goes _, and then it was over. With the archdemon dead, the darkspawn horde quickly crumbled. Most fled back into the Deep Roads. They would remain a threat for years to come, but the Blight had been ended before it had truly begun._

_And what of the Hero of Ferelden, years gone and unheard from? Rumored dead, alive, on the throne, in Ferelden’s courts and halls, building alliances and forging new ground, marking trails within forests and beneath the earth and under the sky. What’s real? What’s not? Leliana could not say, for she had no new letters, the last two or three or ten years old. She tried not to worry, or she didn’t have to. The Warden had died, the Warden had lived. They could always take care of themselves._

_…oh, she misses them so dearly._

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

…on a road, far, far from home, Aeducan rests a moment on the worn haft of her greataxe, fingers tracing humble inscriptions as weathered down as her pride. She sways with the curve of the edges and spares a glance over her shoulder. Cousland is close behind, eyes a warm and clear blue, a real smile on his lips and no heavy crown on his brow. He and Tabris talk an easy, loose banter that hides no cages and obligations and loss. He’s quick for a warrior, and she, gentle for a rogue. Her daggers were sheathed a long time ago.

Brosca teases her companions all alike, sweet and smooth, but she’s honest when she smiles now, her sleight of hand vanishing in the open air. Amell travels earthbound and steadier these days, but she has found her freedom and she has found meaning, too. Together, she and Brosca concoct new tricks and plays, not only for others but for themselves, a game of compassion and empathy. They’re masters of it. 

Mahariel and his heart, on the other hand, move ahead of Aeducan somewhere, in the distant trees. Cool loam and earth beneath their feet, an arching ceiling of branches and frothy green life, and beyond that, the blue sky. Together, they are one, earth and sky; they run and fly, and when they fall, bruised and battered, the others are there, always ready to catch them. So they stand and soar again, two hearts that the world cannot beat down because they beat all the harder in response.

At her side, Surana trails cut strings but makes no motion to tear them off because what would that prove? They’re cut, and it’s enough that he has remained standing. He twists them into helix-like knots at his wrists; he exchanges a hollow-eyed look with Aeducan, and they talk wordlessly about pride and blood and little puppet-golem-dolls.

Zevran steps in between them with an easy smile and his hands on their shoulders, the tightness around his eyes lessening when Aeducan sways back into wild, loose motion and loud laughter, still a little too brash and showy. Surana folds back into himself, but concedes a pale and sidelong smile to all of their flamboyant chattering.

They gather at the crossroads they’ve reached, the dogs nearly bowling a couple of them over in their eagerness, and they take stock of where they’re going and when they’ll return. Somewhere, parchment and ink are procured, and then— 

_Hi hello yes! It’s us! Leliana, you are dear and lovely today! I know because you are you and I am me and we are thusly so! I learned to write that word today! It’s a good day, because I’m writing this letter and you’re reading it. Grand!_

—Mahariel wins the fight for the paper today.

 _Today we’re still a wandering cloud of darkspawn corruption like Morrigan used to say only a little less so. I’m not allowed to use the T word anymore or I would say that we’re a wandering cloud of t— and everyone is laughing now. Even the dogs are laugh-barking. Good. I hope that you get to laugh at something every day so I’m not crossing this out just in case you need to laugh. You should show the Inquisitor. I heard you have three but also just one and nobody knows which one actually glows._  

 _Be well, because we are well, and that is a beautiful thing to know. So you should know this, Leliana. Thank you for loving us! Let it be enough that we are well and together._  

_Ma serannas, thank you!_

And so the story goes.


End file.
